"The increased demand for United Nations peace operations that has arisen in 2004 represents a challenge not seen since the rapid increases in the scale and complexity of operations in the 1990s," Annan said.

"The heightened demand will stretch, to the limit and beyond, the capacity of the United Nations to respond," he said in an annual report.

At the beginning of the year, UN peacekeepers were working in 13 countries, Annan said.

Since then, the world body has expanded its mission in Ivory Coast, started new operations in Burundi and Haiti, and is planning new or extended operations in Iraq and Sudan, he said.

The United Nations has no army of its own and all UN peace operations are funded and staffed by the UN's member states -- which Annan urged to contribute to help make peacekeeping succeed.

"This jump in the demand for United Nations peace operations is a welcome signal of new opportunities for the international community to help bring conflicts to a peaceful solution," Annan said.

"However, those opportunities can only truly be seized if the necessary commitments of political, financial and human resources are made," he said.

The UN chief projected that more than 30,000 uniformed personnel could be required to meet the surging demand, adding to the more than 50,000 already on the ground in 2004.

That would push the number of UN peacekeepers above the all-time high of 78,000 in 1993.

Annan said that while those numbers could be met, "critical gaps" remain in key areas such as rapid-response, specialised military capabilities and French-speaking civilian police.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.